MAGA and Trump's Broken Promise

With renewed public calls for the Trump Administration to release the Epstein files, there have been many concerns surrounding President Donald Trump’s lack of commitment to his campaign promise to make them public.

Jeffery Epstein is notoriously known for being a convicted sex offender and allegedly running a sex-trafficking ring, which supposedly involved trafficking young women and underage girls to his private island in the Carribean, Little St. James. He was arrested and charged with federal sex trafficking crimes on July 6, 2019, and just one month later, on Aug. 10 2019, he was found dead in his prison cell, the cause of death ruled to be suicide, leaving decades of evidence behind.

A large stack of files PC: Unsplash

During Trump’s campaign for the 2024 election, he said that he would release the documents related to the criminal investigation of Jefferey Epstein, but has yet to do so. As a result, there has been serious upset among MAGA supporters and others alike who have been rallying to get these files out to the public for years. 

According to NPR, Trump told his supporters to, “...not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.” As a result, a large portion of Trump’s most vocal supporters have said they felt lied to, publicly making statements disapproving of the Trump Administration’s handling of the Epstein files. 

Joe Rogan, known for being the host of the popular podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience”, and one of Trump’s most outspoken endorsers during the 2024 election, has voiced harsh criticism against the Trump Administration for the lack of transparency regarding the Epstein documents accusing them of, “...trying to gaslight” on the topic, he said. 

Trump, having used podcasts as a major strategy to gain public support during the 2024 election, has also faced major backlash from another MAGA host that invited him onto an episode of his “Flagrant” podcast, Andrew Schulz. When addressing the Epstein file controversy, Schulz voiced his disapproval with the way it’s being managed, "Like obviously, the intelligence community is trying to cover it up. Obviously the Trump administration is trying to cover up. Something changed because they ran on this idea of exposing it," he said. Schulz also said he voted for Trump this past election, but has since been adamant about his regret of doing so.

Last year, Tucker Carlson, a loyal MAGA supporter, hosted Trump for an interview on his television network, “Tucker Carlson Network.” However, following Trump’s first few months in office, Carlson had some negative words for the president’s handling of multiple situations, one of them being the Epstein files.

"The fact that the U.S. government, the one that I voted for, refused to take my question seriously and instead said, 'Case closed. Shut up, conspiracy theorist,' was too much for me," Carlson said, at theTurning Point USA’s Action Summit. 

Both Trump’s dissidents and supporters alike are unhappy about the decision to withhold the files. While the situation hasn’t fully unfolded yet, there is bound to be more debate and discussion among all interested groups.